Scenes of Asuna riding her new husband hard have been inflaming the passions of Sword Art Online fans, although virtually an entire episode given over to their adorable flirting seems to have been too much for many to bear…

Do more research please, .hack and SAO are both released in 2002; hence SAO copying .hack are unlikely. Sure, .hack started being developed first (in 2000s) has alluded people that SAO copies .hack, since they shares the same topic of being trapped inside a virtual game-but by my comparison SAO is far more serious: getting put into coma and killed a BIG difference.

Dude. It's different kind of fan service. Other fan service is like flashing your body here and there. In SOW, it's more like a psychological fan service in which they want the otakus imagine themselves getting married and have lolis for daughter.

Man, did u read the Novel? It's true that Kirito has many girls that love him, but he is only loyal and devoted to Asuna. And most of the girls backed down coz they realize as well how much those two deeply love each other. This is the sweetest and purest love I've ever seen in an anime!!

It's not harem, not really. The author actually apologized in the novel afterwards about having to keep introducing girls because of the target demographic, but it's not taken very far. He stops doing it after a few novels.

He does end up being liked by multiple girls but it's mostly played for laughs, and then only rarely. I don't know if the anime does this differently.